Staff:Four researchers were involved in the overall
project:April McMahon, Rob McMahon, Natalia Slaska, and the researcher responsible for
this study on the Andean languages, Paul Heggarty.Again, for more background on these
researchers, see our project website.

Project Timetable and Completion

Our data were collected in
fieldwork trips between December 2001 and February 2004, and since then have
been analysed and processed to give us results in the form of measures of the
similarity between all the language varieties covered, on the lexical level
so far.We then processed these data
using various ‘family tree‑drawing’ programmes, particularly the very new
NeighbourNet (for more details, click here).

Two articles based on our data and results have already been published
(see below), and our full lexical data can be downloaded here.

Work on comparison of these same language varieties on the phonetic level will be conducted between March
and June 2007 at the department of Linguistics and English Language at
the University of Edinburgh, within the
research project Sound Comparisons:Dialect and Language Comparison and
Classification by Phonetic Similarity.For more details, see the project website at www.soundcomparisons.com.

That work will result in two more articles, one in English to be submitted to a major
linguistics journal, another in Spanish to be submitted to Revista
Andina;and a new database
of sound changes within the Quechua language family.

Our first major article based on this comparative study of the
Andean languages, presenting our methods and most important results, was
published in issue 40 of the leading Peruvian journal on Andean studies, Revista Andina.As the lead article of issue 40, this
consists of:

We hope to publish an adapted English version soon, with the title:Enigmas in the origins of the Andean languages:applying new techniques to the unanswered
questions.

If you’re interested in this research from the point of view of
what it can teach us specifically about the origins
and historical development of the main indigenous languages of the Andes,
and what this can tell us about that of the peoples
who spoke them, then you’re best to read this summary.

If you’re a historical linguist and more interested in the actual new methods we apply for linguistic purposes, I
suggest you read this alternative summary.

Unfortunately the author was not given the opportunity of checking
the proofs before publication, with the result that the article was published
containing many typographical errors introduced during the publisher’s
redrawing of some of the figures, and a few others with phonetic symbols in the
text itself.A full list of errata can be consulted here (in Spanish).

Including seventeen regional varieties of Quechua from
Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia,
as well as Jaqaru, Kawki, and three varieties of Southern (Altiplano) Aymara

As a further outcome from the above comparative research project,
and a tangible output of value to the speakers of these languages far beyond
the linguistic research community, in the second half of 2005 we converted our
fieldwork phonetics recordings into a cd‑rom
of the Sounds of the Andean Languages.This cd‑rom
is being distributed free to all the communities concerned (our twenty
fieldwork locations where our sound recordings were made), and any other
interested relevant institutions in the Andean countries.An online version of the whole cd‑rom is also available on our Quechua website.

Both the cd‑rom
and web versions are based principally around tables of side-by-side links that
speakers need simply glide their mouse over to hear how the same word is
pronounced in all twenty regional language varieties in our database.The structure guides users through the
regional differences in pronunciation, with the specific intention of
supporting literacy programmes in native Andean languages. Particularly we aim
to support the adoption of the neutral, harmonised spelling system now being
promoted throughout the Andean countries, by helping explain those aspects of
it that speakers in one region or another can at first sight find difficult and
perplexing.(It is possible to view our
corresponding broad phonetic transcriptions too, which make the resource
valuable also to trained linguists.)

Engaging with our audience puts
a premium on our dissemination material being as user-friendly as
possible.It is cd‑roms and the internet that have allowed us to include
maps, over 400 photos of our informants and their home regions, and – crucially for non-specialists and for as yet
essentially unwritten languages – media that can integrate easy-to-use
(clickable) sound recordings.Equally vital is that our cd‑rom
and website are available in a Spanish language version (as well as an English
language one).It also includes sample
material in six varieties of Quechua and Aymara themselves.

This work was carried out by Paul Heggarty, with translations to
Spanish by two Peruvian linguists, Dante Oliva León and especially Marco
Ferrell Ramírez.The production and
dissemination of both the website and cd‑roms
were funded entirely through a research dissemination grant from the U.K.’s
Arts and Humanities Research Board.